SMITHFIELD - On a holiday when sales of chocolate and roses skyrocket and singles become acutely aware of their unattached status, Lori Langdon chose to send her mother a singing valentine to chase away the sorrow of love just lost.

Langdon's father died Jan. 5 of respiratory failure. Bobby Wood, 74, and his wife, Joyce, 71, had been married for 54 years.

On Thursday, members of the Johnston County Chorale surprised Joyce Wood by serenading her in the Johnston Memorial Hospital medical mall, where she walks every morning with friends.

Langdon, 42, thought it would be special way to celebrate the holiday because the tunes the chorale sang, such as "Let Me Call You 'Sweetheart,' " were songs her mother used to sing to her when she was little. And now Wood sings the same songs to Langdon's son. The day before Valentine's, Jonathan Langdon, 4, asked his grandmother at a family dinner: "Mama Joyce, are you sad?"

Sometimes, yes, she replied. It's still hard to discuss her husband's passing without choking up.

"But I try to remember the good times," she said.

On Feb. 1, Wood, a breast cancer survivor, returned to volunteering at Johnston Memorial Hospital's cancer center. And she has been working out three times a week with her daughter, who is a personal fitness trainer.

"I could sit and cry all day," Wood said. "But I knew I had to get out and not feel sorry for myself."

Wood said she had remembered commenting to her daughter about how sweet she thought it was when she saw a couple being serenaded in the medical mall last year. Still, it left her speechless when chorale members, including some folks she knew, stopped her Thursday with these words:

Keep the love-light glowing
in your eyes so true,

Let me call you "Sweetheart,"
I'm in love with you.

Wood said she knows her daughter probably enlisted the chorale this year, knowing it would be her first Valentine's Day alone in a very long time. But Wood said beyond the romantic lyrics, the music lifted her spirit in another way.

"We just love that song. It's such a classic," Wood said. "That's our song. I've known it for years. My mom sang it to me."

The singing valentines are an annual fundraiser for the chorale. The group has about 50 members, ranging from their 20s to their 90s, and puts on several Broadway- or Christmas-themed shows a year.

"It's exhausting," said Connie Johnson, a chorale member who chauffeured a rotating group of six to eight singers in the Smithfield area. Another contingent, meanwhile, crisscrossed the Clayton area.

In both groups, women clad in red and men in tuxedos filled singing requests from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. Thursday. Many, such as Johnson, an insurance agent, took time off work to participate. Changing locations about every half hour, they belted out two or three love songs per stop.

In the five years the chorale has sung on Valentine's Day, members have performed a cappella through power outages, marked a couple's 28th wedding anniversary and crooned to a Superior Court judge. Sometimes, as happened this year, generous donors simply have given them $100 and told them to sing at as many nursing homes and senior centers in the area as they can.

Two years ago, the chorale visited a bedridden sick man at a nursing home. The man's wife told him to open his eyes. He did, and as the group launched into one love song, he began mouthing the song's words with them. The singers broke into tears.

"It's a fundraiser," Johnson said. "But it does more good for your heart than anything else."